Headlines of church leaders being arrested or jailed, like those we have seen this week, all too often contain stories of abuses of position and power by those in authority against vulnerable people, and a betrayal of the principles and values of the faith they represent. This wasn’t the case with news about the multiple arrests of church leader Jarrod McKenna, who was recently profiled here for his efforts to bring the experience of those in Australia’s immigration detention centres into the public eye. McKenna’s run-ins with the law were out of protest to the detention of asylum seekers, including children, in Australia’s processing centres. A similar story is taking place in Britain.

As the international community faces the complex challenge of responding to the exodus of millions from their home countries, many of whom are currently making their way across Europe and beyond, reportage has been suitably focused on how nations might accept those seeking asylum.

What tends to receive less coverage is how many of those waiting to have their asylum applications processed end up in immigration detention centres. This is a system that is largely out of sight, out of mind—rolling quietly on beneath the headlines, often eluding the rapid turnover of news cycles. Some of those held in detention have been in the UK for some years but are no longer able to prove citizenship to their original country, so are now stateless persons. Commonly those detained are asylum seekers hoping for confirmation of refugee status.

You could be forgiven for not knowing that the UK has one of the largest networks of immigration detention in Europe, with ten centres in operation. The visibility of these centres in the public sphere is minimal, as journalists are prevented from visiting. Some of them are managed by the Prison Service, others outsourced to security companies. Security measures in these centres are often comparable to those of prisons. It is not a crime to seek asylum, and these are not “illegal” immigrants, so the penal conditions of these centres are somewhat difficult to square, which is further compounded by claims of mistreatment, inaccessibility to essential services and abuse taking place.

Encouragingly, the government has recently introduced new policy measures relating to children in immigration detention, which are now incorporated into the Immigration Act 2014. The purpose of the policy is to prevent families with children from being kept in detention centres before their removal from the UK, although they may be kept in ‘short-term holding facilities’ as a ‘last resort’. However, recent figures have shown that some children are still being kept in immigration detention centres despite the policy shift.

This apparent mismatch between policy and reality, coupled with a dearth of access to the detention centres as many are closed off to the media, make it difficult to know what is actually happening on the ground. There seems to be a tending away from transparency by the government, something not unique to the UK. The Australian government has come under fire for recent legislation that forbids those working in its infamous immigration detention centres from disclosing any information about their experiences.

Reflecting on the current migrant crisis in Europe, it was a single disturbing image of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s body washed up on the Turkish shore that galvanised international attention and catalysed responses on every level. We were reminded once again how images can be powerful tools in moving us to act to help those in plight.

As immigration detention centres are deliberately kept out of plain sight, these images are inaccessible, and public awareness and scrutiny is largely impossible. As a result, we are at risk of perpetuating a system dealing with some of the most vulnerable people in our midst that is largely unseen and operating with a degree of secrecy. Just as we tend to hide our actions when we are unable to openly confront what we are doing or failing to do, so it may be for our governments as well.

As Britain searches for ways to accommodate (and hopefully welcome) refugees, undeniably a challenging task, transparency is vital. Campaigns like McKenna’s, which give visibility to the situations of those who are otherwise out of sight, may be necessary for realising a vision for society that speaks out on behalf of the voiceless and upholds the rights of the vulnerable. 

Gillian Madden is currently a research intern at Theos

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Image by Norbert Nagel from wikimedia.org available in the public domain